Category: Resources

Madison Owen

Administrative Assistant for the Education Department

Madison Owen is here for you!  As the administrative assistant to the Education Department at Sul Ross State University, she helps students and potential students with general questions regarding our Education programs. Ms. Owen is located at the front desk in the Education Department and greets everyone with a smile.  

Her duties are extensive including assisting with the process of student teaching placements every semester for each student, organization of student files, and providing answers for students that call. Ms. Owen is there to assist and direct in any collaboration of communication with all faculty, staff, and students. She enjoys working with a supportive community that welcomes anyone. “Working with and helping the SR students are my most favorite part of my position. I feel that a hard-working college student deserves a University that works just as hard for them”.  

Ms. Owen’s mom, Jennifer Mustain is a Sul Ross alumni and brought her along to her classes on some occasions when she was young. Feeling the excitement of university life and feeling “the big kid life” inspired and motivated her to work hard to earn her bachelor’s degree in 2018. This fall, she started pursuing her master’s degree in Licensed Professional Counseling here at Sul Ross and is enjoying it. Ms.Owen is family to Sul Ross State University. The experience she brings to her position is an asset to the Education Department.    

BEST PRACTICES FOR PASSWORD SECURITY

It’s Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Creating strong passwords, different passwords for multiple accounts, and changing your password frequently prevents others from stealing your information. Using a password manager is an easy option for keeping your passwords protected and accessible to only you. Keeping your password secure is your digital responsibility. Read more about it here:

NCAM Message 2 – Password Management

CREATIVITY IN ZOOM LECTURES AND DISCUSSIONS

Using Zoom for incorporating the 4C’s (communication, creativity, critical thinking, and communication) into discussions and virtual lessons present an opportunity for increased engagement with students. Keeping students’ attention can be difficult but using the features in Zoom for engaging your students is easy.  

Screen Share in Zoom (Creativity)  

As the host, you can share your videos, publications, examples of coursework, and project-based work. Instructors can also let others share their screens by making them the host. No worries. Instructors can switch back to the host whenever you like. Any creation starts by observing other’s creations. Choosing the whiteboard during your zoom class allows you and the class to annotate.  

SCREEN SHARING AND WHITEBOARDS IN ZOOM

TSTA-AE EVENT

INVITATION

We will be electing officers and honoring our December graduates.

Congratulations TSTA-AE Graduates:

Alma Baeza 

Destany Munoz           

Rebecca Ramos       

  

We are so proud of you! Best Wishes in your career!

If you are an education major and need an organization that inspires and supports educators in Texas consider joining TSTA today.

JOIN TODAY

INTERACTIVE ZOOM AND THE 4C’S

Using Zoom for incorporating the 4C’s (communication, creativity, critical thinking, and communication) into discussions and virtual lessons present an opportunity for increased engagement with students. Keeping students’ attention can be difficult, but using the features in Zoom for engaging your students is easy.

Need a virtual project? Use the option to assign students to breakout rooms. Instructors can monitor and participate in each room to instill they are on target. Make sure to tell them when to come back to the main room or assign a time in the settings.

COLLABORATE WITH BREAKOUT ROOMS

INTERACTIVE ZOOM AND THE 4C’S

Over the next few weeks, we will provide suggestions on how to integrate technology into your lessons using Zoom.

Using Zoom for incorporating the 4C’s (communication, creativity, critical thinking, and communication) into discussions and virtual lessons present an opportunity for increased engagement with students. Keeping students’ attention can be difficult, but using the features in Zoom for engaging your students is easy.

Use the Zoom Chat Feature (Communication)

Putting directions and links into your chat will send to all your participants immediately. Maybe it’s a link to a slideshow or additional resources. By putting links into the chatbox, the entire class can simply click and copy. Instructors can also require a response from everyone during a lecture to keep them engaged.

Explore How To:

ZOOM FEATURES

What Is Prezi?

Prezi is an online Adobe Flash-based presentation program. It differs from traditional presentation programs, like Microsoft PowerPoint and Apple Keynote, in that it is not based on slides. Instead, Prezi presentations exist on a canvas which is navigated by zooming in and out of different points on the canvas. Prezi allows the creation of linear and nonlinear presentations by changing the sizes and positions of objects. While Prezi is a visual medium that can display text, but not the most conducive for displaying lengthy text. With these limitations in mind, instructors and students can be better able to garner student engagement by using Prezi. 

Using Prezi designers can visually illustrate the relationship between concepts in the presentation, aiding student understanding of the presentation. Prezi also offers the ability for students to collaborate in class when using the program online, as up to eight people can edit the Prezi at the same time. For those teachers with larger classes, this could be accomplished by dividing students into groups, allowing for the synthesis of students’ knowledge. Since Prezi is available through a free online format, students and teachers can use Prezi during and after class through an online link. 

Because Prezi is still being developed, and is free, occasionally designers may encounter glitches. However, they are few and far between. Be mindful of its capabilities and its limitations before implementing Prezi into courses.

For more information or to view tutorials, Please visit www.prezi.com. 

TSTA District Conference Rundown

On 9 November Sul Ross State University’s local chapter of TSTA-AE hosted a district conference, with future educators attended from El Paso Community College, UTEP, and our Sul Ross State University TSTA-AE students. The conference was a success as it was “a really big turnout for Sul Ross, many students attended [from Sul Ross] and outside of Sul Ross.” Conference  keynote speaker, Pat Dasch, was one of the Apollo mission astronauts, working side by side taking pictures of the Apollo missions work . Dash, who has a degree in American Studies from the University of East Anglia, U.K., later worked in the space program at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas and NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC., while also championing public advocacy of space exploration as editor-in-chief of Ad Astra magazine. Since retiring to Alpine Dash has served as the founding administrator for the Rio Grande Research Center at SRSU, and more recently has enjoyed providing editorial assistance to CBBS.

 After talking to Dash, students split up into two groups to attend break-out session focusing on: time management, classroom management, family involvement and team building. The time management seminar was presented by Alpine High School Principal Justin Gonzales and Alpine Middle School Teacher Macy Downey. Meanwhile, Classroom Management presented by representatives of the Region 18 Service Centre. After a lunch break, the next two break-out sessions were held. Family involvement was presented by Selena Garcia (Sul Ross Teacher Education alumnus), a second-grade teacher in Andrews ISD. The other  seminar was Team Building, presented  by Megan Miller who was previously district president for TSTA-AE. A student there described it as a “very informative event for teachers now and aspiring students. Also, the conference was very informative for future teachers giving them approaches on how to teach and what they will be doing. It even gave students a bigger idea of what it’s like to be a teacher.” 

Attendees of the TSTA District Conference participating in the professional development seminars.

All About iMovie

iMovie for iOS is the mobile version of Apple’s first-party video editing software. Though it originally debuted all the way back in 1999, this video editing program didn’t make it to mobile devices until June 24, 2010, when it was released for the launch of the iPhone 4.

Need a quick and fun way to make a video for class? Use iMovie! iMovie is an incredibly user-friendly app for students and educators to use in and out of the classroom. This app is a very useful resource when interacting with students, especially with younger generations, as it is fun and easy to play with. iMovie is very handy for teachers and future teachers because they can record demonstrations and lessons for a classroom, or when they’re out for the day.

iMovie is easy and very convenient when you plan on sharing and uploading your video on any compatible device. This application is compatible with devices that have access to iCloud and any apple device, allowing you to easily transfer projects between your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch using Airdrop or iCloud Drive on iPhone 5, iPad (4th generation), iPad Air, iPad mini, iPod touch (5th generation), and later devices. Once you’re ready to debut your project, you can share it to iMovie and watch the project on all your devices that have iCloud, including Apple TV.

Here is a really good website on how to edit and make videos on iMovie: How to use iMovie for Mac, tips and more

Below is quick reliable YouTube video on how to use iMovie

What is Microsoft Sway?

 

Part of the Microsoft Office family of products, Sway is a type of presentation program that became available for general use in August 2015. Sway allows users, who have a Microsoft account, to combine text, images, videos, and more to create a presentable website. Available in 39 Languages, it a very fast, simple, detailed and easy program to create with because Sway does the work. 

How to use the Microsoft Sway app in the classroom: 

  Teachers in the classroom can easily pull content locally from internet sources such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, OneDrive, and YouTube into their brief and engaging Sway presentations. Teachers can easily create presentations on nearly all topics ranging from science to history, social studies, English and even more. With brief and detailed pictures, videos, text information and sounds from different music genres students can also use sway to easily create class presentations.